Posted on 02 June 2014

There’s a game rocketing up the AppData charts — and leaving Facebook users addicted. Trivia Crack, a trivia game by Argentinan developer Etermax, is also known natively as Preguntados. Facebook users are getting increasingly hooked on Trivia Crack, which had 2.7 million daily active users (DAU) a month ago, but has more than doubled it since, clocking in at 6.5 DAU today.

Last month, Trivia Crack didn’t make the top 25 leaderboard, but it has jumped all the way to No. 9, in terms of Facebook DAU, as tracked by AppData. The game is also ranked No. 14 on the Facebook MAU chart.

Wondering what other games Facebook users play regularly? Check out our leaderboard below.

YouTube wasn’t even on the top 25 leaderboard in March, but has vaulted all the way to 9th today, in terms of Facebook DAU. AppData’s estimates show that in the past month, YouTube’s Facebook DAU has grown 225.14 percent just in the past month.

Other than that, the chart hasn’t changed a whole lot, with King games Candy Crush Saga and Farm Heroes Saga maintaining a stranglehold on the top.

Posted on 01 April 2014

One of the apps rocketing up the AppData leaderboard makes the world more open and connected, but maybe not in quite the way Mark Zuckerberg had hoped. Tinder, a popular dating app, has grown from No. 25 on the AppData’s March Facebook daily active user leaderboard, all the way to No. 17. Tinder is also the top dating app, in terms of both Facebook DAU and MAU (monthly active user) estimates.

Other than that, the chart hasn’t changed a whole lot, with King games Candy Crush Saga and Farm Heroes Saga maintaining a stranglehold on the top.

Click below to find out which apps Facebook users are addicted to, as sorted by AppData’s daily active user estimates.

Posted on 13 March 2014

Pinterest publicly introduced a new Gifts feed on Wednesday that only displays “Product Pins” – pins that are enhanced with additional details, including pricing, availability and where the item can be purchased online. The announcement was made on Pinterest’s Business blog, aimed at advertisers, instead of on the company’s more widely read, consumer-facing main… Read More

Posted on 06 January 2014

Facebook has changed the way many people communicate, but the social network has also played a hand in how people gamble. At the recent Social Gambling & Gaming Summit in Las Vegas, several game developers and land-based casino executives talked about the importance Facebook has held in growing the business.

Casinos and game developers are finding more devoted gamers (and paying customers) through Facebook — and not just at poker and slots games. As a result, some casinos are even bringing popular Facebook games such as Plants vs. Zombies (an EA title) into real-life with physical games based on the apps.

Derrick Morton, a speaker at the Social Gambling & Gaming Summit, is the CEO of FlowPlay — makers of Vegas World, a total Vegas experience that goes beyond cards and slots and allows users to work their way into upgraded suites, with jazzier outfits and invites to better parties. Vegas World has roughly 350,000 monthly active users, Morton said, and 70,000 daily active users. Morton spoke with Inside Facebook about how Facebook affects social gambling.

Inside Facebook: In terms of more social gambling in general, what does Facebook have to offer?

Derrick Morton: There’s really nothing unique to Facebook about gambling, or about social gaming, except for the social graph. The social graph allows you to have access to activities, leaderboards that show activity by day, activity by week, activity by game, people can share on their Facebook wall and compare on the leaderboard, and it’s big from a sharing point of view. That’s what Facebook is all about — sharing major milestones, jackpots and things that happen to you in the game with your friends and brag about it.

IF: Could more major land-based casinos take hold and develop Facebook games or some kind of portal where people could play their games through Facebook?

DM: Already, Caesar’s Palace runs the No. 1 casino game on Facebook, Slot-O-Mania, and they also own Bingo Blitz. So that’s two of the top Facebook games already owned by them. MGM (Grand) owns the No. 3 or 4 social casino, which is MyVegas. It does a really excellent job at connecting real-world casinos with virtual casinos. When you play MyVegas, you can get coupons or steak dinners or other things like that at an actual casino. So there’s a lot of activity already from land-based casinos entering the world of social gambling.

For us, though, what’s fun is we make about 1/3 of our revenue from people buying each other gifts and drinks inside the game. When you’re playing with someone else, you can buy a round of martinis, a round of champagne, or a round of beers for the players who are in the room with you. It improves the odds of everyone in the game temporarily.

IF: Do you feel we’ll see a little more revenue on the casino games front in 2014? Are more people starting to play casino games through Facebook?

DM: The growth curve is probably not as steep as it was a year or two ago. Industry analysts only expect it to grow about 10 to 15 percent year-over-year for the next few years. I think the last I saw was 4.4 billion by 2015.

IF: What do you see coming up in the next year for social gaming and gambling on Facebook?

DM: I think what’s going to happen is current gambling games in the real land-based casinos are highly regulated. And because of that regulation, they’re slow to evolve. Even if you have a great idea for a new slots game, it can take you 2 to 3 years to submit that idea, the artwork, the process, to regulators to get the approval that is necessary to actually get that game in front of consumers.

In the online and social world, that can be compressed down to weeks. I expect that the evolution of social casinos will run far ahead of real casinos, just because they’re not as regulated. Hybrid games are coming out — like Fringo, that combines the elements of slots and bingo. It’s gonna take what people are familiar with and creating an entirely new game out of it.

IF: You talk about how the evolution can move a lot quicker online because there’s not much red tape to cut through. Could a land-based casino try a game online, then reverse-engineer and bring it to the real world?

DM: I think that’s totally true. You still have to go through regulators for approval, but it’s certainly easier for them to go through that A/B process and the introduction process and to test new things before they take it to the real world. Testing a new game online can cost you $50,000-$100,000. Taking a new game to regulators and getting it on the floor to find out that it’s a failure could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions.

Posted on 06 December 2013

Once upon a time, Instagram was a little app for sharing photos with friends and photography buffs. Its mostly public sharing model worked at that size. But now with over 150 million users, widespread awareness, and years of people following each other, users may be holding back from posting as much because they don’t want the whole world to see what they see.

That’s why it may be the right time for Instagram to launch private messaging.

That time could come as soon as December 12th when Instagram holds a press event in New York, for which it sent out invitations today with the tagline “You are invited to share a moment with Kevin Systrom and the Instagram team.” The snail-mail invite came with a woodblock printed with an Instagram on it, leading writers, including our own Jordan Crook, to speculate Instagram might launch some sort of physical printing option. GigaOm’s Om Malik said ”well-placed sources” told him Instagram is preparing to release.

There are a ton of reasons this makes sense. Let’s start with why physical printing isn’t worthy of its own launch event. Last year, Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, tested a postcard service for sending paper prints of your photos to friends. It never took off and was shut down. Facebook
also launched a physical Gifts service but eventually switched to only selling virtual gift cards. It seems Facebook hasn’t physical goods to be a big enough business to support.

Meanwhile there are a slew of small startups like Postagram and CanvasPop that print Instagrams on everything from postcards to canvas
paintings. There doesn’t seem to be a ton of additional value for Instagram to add by launching its own printing service. A simpler native integration for sending photos to or buying prints from third-party services beyond its existing APIs doesn’t seem important enough to warrant its own press blitz (though it could be a small part of the show).

“Public Eyes / They’re Watching You”

So why messaging? Because Instagram has outgrown public sharing. Yes, you can set your entire profile to private so only people you approve can see everything you share, but that’s privacy with a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel.

Most people are excited to share some photos publicly and have them shown right in the feeds of whoever follows them. In fact, they tag their photos with reams of hashtags just so they show up in more places and win them the sweet sweet validation of another Instagram heart or follower. Setting their account to private would mean their more benign pics of sunsets and lattes wouldn’t get as many eyeballs.

While Instagram’s privacy model hasn’t changed much over the years from a functionality standpoint, a lot more people see the photos you post today. There’s better native discovery of photos, a web version of your profile, and an ecosystem of third-party apps for power users. That means someone who is curious about where you are and what you are doing has a lot easier time finding your photos now.

But most importantly, Instagram just has way more users now than when some of its earliest, most loyal, and most engaged users joined. It’s gone from early tech adopters and artists to teens to mainstream young adults to even hosting a good number of parents.

Does that growth progression ring any bells? It should because Facebook similarly went from young to mainstream to your mom. And what did that cause? A chilling effect on sharing. Posting party pics, silly jokes, or snarky perspectives on the world is a lot less appealing when you
know your dad, boss, little sister, or stalker are watching.

That is a dangerous trend for Instagram. It needs people constantly sharing photos to fill its feed so other people check it, are delighted…and see its new ads. Less sharing = less happiness/revenue.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of apps happy to help you share photos privately. Snapchat is building a powerhouse social network on the concept of private sharing. It doesn’t matter who joins Snapchat, as the only people who see your photos and videos are the ones you send them to. Then there’s a ton of international messaging apps like WeChat, WhatsApp, KakaoTalk, and Line where people can share their precious moments privately.

Perhaps if Facebook’s bid to acquire Snapchat was successful, it could use that as its private photo-sharing play. But it got rejected, and so the burden falls on Instagram.

I’d imagine Instagram messaging could fit in the top left of the app, or be worked into the existing Activity tab alongside tags and likes. Anyone you follow would be eligible to send you messages, and group messaging would be allowed. Threads would typically start with a photo and caption, and permit both photo and text replies to let people have a conversation around the moments they’re sharing. Messages could also be a private back channel for discussing photos shared publicly.

Done right, private photo sharing could be a huge win for Instagram.

4 Reasons Instagram Needs Messages

1. Boxing Out Competitors

Most people who have Snapchat probably have Instagram, too, and more of their friends are probably also on Instagram. Its size suddenly goes from a liability to an asset with private messaging.

2. Notifications

Today if your best friend shares a photo on Instagram, you might not even know. There’s no notification sent. And since Instagram is an unfiltered feed like Twitter, it has the same issue where your favorite people can get drowned out by some shutter-happy person you followed but don’t even know. You might be missing some of Instagram’s most relevant content. Without the constant stream of
notifications like on Facebook, it’s easy to forget to even visit Instagram. I sometimes go weeks without checking as there’s nothing there addressed specifically to me to demand my attention.

But with Instagram messaging private sharing, you can be damn sure I’d open any photo sent to me. And after that, I’d probably browse my feed, get a few more smiles, and maybe see some ads. Instagram Messages could re-engage tuned-out users.

3. Growth

Messages could drive sign-ups for Instagram. You can already share a photo via email but then the engagement happens outside of Instagram in a decidedly crusty old medium. If I could privately message people by phone number (the identity basis for most modern messaging apps), I might lure my friends into signing up for Instagram.

4. Intimate Sharing

Private messaging could get people sharing a whole new category of photos and videos on Instagram. Intimate ones.

I’m not just talking about sexy ones (though who couldn’t benefit from some blur and filters to touch up their birthday suit or flirtatious smile). I mean the other stuff people currently share on Snapchat. Funny faces. Inside jokes. Lighthearted insults. Controversial or illegal activities. Flawed portraits. Random glimpses into their current scene.

These are all things you probably wouldn’t want to share with everyone, and wouldn’t want permanently associated with your profile. They don’t necessarily need to be able to disappear like Snapchats (though
maybe that’d be useful), but having them buried in conversation threads would probably be enough privacy by obscurity.

In a world where you get made fun of for sharing selfies, but people do it anyway, it seems clear that the world’s most beloved photo app gives a way to share on the down low. It’d certainly keep some of the photos that appear in this post from ending up on a blog somewhere.

Instagram messaging could also turn the app into a true visual communication medium — one where people use it as a sort of replacement for text. Getting people constantly sending photos and
captions back and forth over Instagram could rack up more engagement in a single conversation than the social network side of that app sees in a week.

Right now, conversation on Instagram is restricted to its messy, unthreaded comment system. And like the chilling effect on the photos in the first place, I’m often apprehensive to share a comment publicly, especially if I only really care if the person who shot the photo saw it. I’d often be inclined to message them directly, but currently have to resort to text or Facebook message. Messaging would fix that.

Maybe I’m drinking my own Kool-Aid but this seems like a wise move to make, and sooner rather than later. Sure, it would bloat Instagram a bit, making it less clear what the purpose of the once-lean app is. It might cannibalize some photos from the feed, though they might inspire more return visits and engagement as private messages. It could be seen, like Poke, as another desperate attempt by Facebook to compete with Snapchat. And it could flop, becoming a rarely used extra communication channel we’re loathe to check. But I don’t think those are big enough concerns to dissuade Instagram.

The company’s mission is “to capture and share the world’s moments.” But right now it’s only broadcasting them.

Posted on 05 November 2013

Zola, the new wedding registry startup emerging from Gilt And AlleyCorp founder Kevin Ryan and a group of former Gilt employees, has raised $3.25 million in Series A funding led by Thrive Capital. Joshua Kushner, founder and managing partner of Thrive Capital, will join Zola’s Board of Directors. Ryan, who led the seed funding for the startup, is also contributing to the A round, we are told.

Zola, led by former Gilt employees, Shan-Lyn Ma and Nobu Nakaguchi; is trying to reimagine the wedding registries for couples. It’s part content, part Pinterest-like inspiration sharing, and part wish list/registry. The result is a well-designed. easy to use wedding registry that tells a story of a couple.

When you visit the site and sign up for a Zola wedding registry, you can do some of the same things you would do with your wedding website, including designing a home page with a customized URL, photos, and more. The design of the registry homepage is highly customizable, or you can choose to use some of the stock photography that Gilt provides. You can then create collections of different types of categories you want to set up in your registry, including kitchen, food, experiences, honeymoon, furniture and more. You could even create a cash fund to buy a home and accept donations. The user experience is strikingly similar to creating a board on Pinterest, except you are adding items from Zola.

Within each collection, Zola allows you to simply add items from categories of products to collections. So if you were registering for kitchen items, you could add an array of utensils, china, glassware, kitchen tools, gadgets and more (including those from brands like Cuisinart or Le Creuset). Zola partially operates as an e-commerce site, as they are sourcing all the products from the brands themselves.

Of course, you won’t find the kind of selection of home goods you would on a Bloomingdale’s, or Macys.com, but Zola has ambitions to carry and add more inventory (the site currently lists about 1,000 items to register/buy). Plus Zola allows you to add additional items to your registry that you wouldn’t find at a traditional store, such as cooking classes, music lessons, gift certificates to KitchenSurfing, bicycles, massages and more.

You can also denote certain objects to be items that groups can buy, or to which individuals could contribute a portion of the purchase price. This is especially useful to high-priced products like furniture. And couples using Zola have the ability to control shipping times, with the site notifying couples when items have been purchased and allows them to receive the gifts immediately or at a later date.

There are a number of others aiming to disrupt the wedding registry space, including RegistryLove, but Gilt has an experienced team with an eye for design and ease of use.

Posted on 03 September 2013

Facebook is working hard to make Gifts a viable e-commerce platform. As new brands are regularly added to the program, Facebook pushes Gifts whenever a friend has a birthday (or, on old News Feed, when good news is shared). Sister site AllFacebook noticed Tuesday that the main hub site for Facebook gifts has undergone a renovation.

With this aesthetic shift, Facebook has made Gifts a little more user-friendly. Now, when a person wants to send a Facebook gift to a friend via a birthday notification (or searches for Facebook Gifts in the search bar), Facebook takes the user to a page instead of a hover box. Now, users can search for gifts on a separate page with deeper features.

Facebook has been testing introducing Gifts to users in several ways. In the older News Feed, a prompt to purchase a gift for a friend would appear on a post with good news, such as the birth of a child or a new job. Now, Facebook suggests that you buy a gift for someone whenever they have a birthday.

If users are wondering which gift is best for their friends, this new design solves this. If a user clicks Fandango or Target, it will show which of their friends have liked that brand. If a user clicks on the birthday notification, it will suggest gifts for their friend based on what they’ve liked. Users can also search for certain products through a search bar.

The new design also notes whether this is available on the Facebook Card or if it’s just a digital gift.

Readers: Does this new design make you more or less likely to purchase a Facebook gift?